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I hold his gaze as the lie burns through me. He’s right. I don’t know if he can tell just by looking at me, but my heart beats for her and my skin burns for her touch. Seeing her collapse in the parking lot felt like someone was ripping my heart out with talons and being sent away from her is torture. I want to be by her side, helping and protecting her.
Instead, I’m here fearing that, once again, she’ll close herself off from me.
“I am impartial,” I lie smoothly. “I know how important this is. I know what the other families say about it because we haven’t presented anyone as the killer. I know his death hurt you, but do you not see how blinded you are? Your guilt for not being here is making you blame the one person who was here, and in the meantime, the real killer is out there running around. And they’re likely the one behind all the attempts on Anastasia’s life.”
“Attempts that have been meaningless,” Viktor mutters. “I wouldn’t put it past her to have orchestrated those herself.”
“Viktor—”
“Son, you don’t see her like I do. She’s a snake. I know she is.” He drains the rest of his glass and smacks his lips together. “You don’t understand. You don’t see things like I do. I’m watching the family I spent decades building crumble right underneath me because of a little girl, and now we have the Cartel ready to kill and skin us alive just for the fun of it. And our Godmother?” He scoffs sharply. “She refuses to go where the easy money is. Mark my words, my boy. When the bodies start piling up, she’s the only one to blame.”
I want to tell him he’s wrong, that he’s misguided. After all, Anastasia is working hard to set us on the right path, but the more Viktor talks, the more I fear she’s not acting fast enough. I need to get him on her side as soon as I can, which means I need to find Sergey’s killer and end his suspicions once and for all.
“You have to trust me,” I say. “Otherwise, all of this is for nothing, and she’ll have your head for being a traitor.”
“We don’t have time.” Viktor’s hand lands heavily on my shoulder. “I’ll give you one last chance to finish up yourinvestigation, Son. But I’ll be forced to step in if you don’t do it quickly. I’ll get answers out of her one way or the other.”
His grip tightens briefly and my heart falters.
That’s what I’m afraid of.
16
ANASTASIA
Everything feels different when I return home from the hospital. I can’t tell if it’s because of the argument with Viktor or the fact that I now know I’m carrying a baby.
Despite my best efforts to put it out of my mind, something like that is hard to forget. Faina promises to keep my pregnancy a secret and I have no choice but to trust her. She’s given me no cause to ever doubt her, but there’s a constant irritating thought in the back of my mind that somehow, people will find out just by looking at me.
The night I return, Viktor avoids me. I don’t expect him to apologize. He’s too proud for something like that and I’m too exhausted to follow it up. Logically, I know I should since his display in front of all those guards puts me in a weaker light than I was before. I can’t have people yelling in my face and talking down all my hard work. That plus fainting in front of them definitely makes me look like I’m losing my marbles, and I need to get control of everything quickly.
I let Faina tell people my iron was low due to sickness, not stress. At least this way, most people believe that it was anoutside reason as to why I collapsed. I double down on the construction plans and have two very loud phone calls with the newest company I’ve acquired to make sure anyone deciding to listen in gets the full picture. Money will be flooding in in no time. I learned from my father that sometimes you want people to overhear things. No one spreads info faster than the gossip in your own organization.
Since Viktor won’t apologize, I send him to a meeting with the Irish. It’s just a brief discussion about their construction plans, but given Viktor’s injury and his apparent dislike for our new direction, putting him right in the middle of it brings me a small note of enjoyment.
And then there’s Erik.
Sending him away from the hospital was partly because I didn’t trust Viktor alone for too long. I didn’t want to get home and discover he’d changed the locks. But since learning I’m carrying his baby, things are different. It’s either my new hyper-awareness of my actions, or he’s able to tell that something is wrong because in the week following my hospital visit, he’s more attentive than usual. He cooks me dinner and fills me in on every little detail he overhears. When he learns that I collapsed due to stress and overworking, he suddenly goes into overdrive with taking care of me. Cups of tea just spawn when he’s around. He’s on top of phone calls and three steps ahead of me with security plans when it comes to travel. He kits out the limos with fresh fruit and food while making sure I take regular breaks to eat and rest.
He even threatens to carry me upstairs if I don’t stop working at a decent time just to get me to stop working.
I don’t doubt that he’ll do exactly that if I don’t pause, so I’m always willing. The more time he spends with me as my shadow, the more I notice about him.
He’s gorgeous, that’s never been a problem, but lately, it feels like I can’t look away. I want to keep staring at him like he’s some kind of work of art out for display. Every time he talks, I find questions to keep him talking just so I can listen to the thrum of his voice. He’s explained the new security plan for the gala to me at least a few times and I’m constantly tempted to ask again just to hear his lengthy explanation. My heart skips a beat when the doors open and it’s not him. When my phone buzzes with an alert, I find myself looking for his name among the messages.
This is more than a crush.
It shouldn’t be.
It should just be fun.
But it’s more than that. And now I’m carrying his baby. What kind of future am I setting up for myself?
I don’t even know if I want to keep the baby. It hardly fits into my plans for the family, and everyone will look at me differently the moment I become a mother. Not only will it be a beacon to my womanhood, but I’ll literally be birthing my weakness into the world, bringing in a child who will forever be a target simply because of who I am.
Thinking it over while tucked under blankets in the conservatory, surrounded by papers, I wonder if my mother had the same thoughts about me. My father forever blamed me for her death in childbirth, so I have no way of knowing whether she was excited to have me or if she dreaded it. From the way my father treated me, he definitely didn’t seem happy about myexistence, but still, I tried to earn his approval. He was the only parent I had, the only source of that kind of love.
I was denied.